'Lost' Stonehenge skeleton offers tantalizing mystery

LONDON {AP} He could have been a Roman enemy, or an Anglo-Saxon king. He may have lived among the Druids. Archaeologists only know he was executed at Stonehenge centuries ago.

They hope new scientific techniques will help them determine the identity of a man whose skeleton was unearthed at Stonehenge in 1923 and then overlooked in storage until recently.

The skeleton, unveiled Friday, provides the first indication of an execution taking place at Stonehenge, according to English Heritage, the agency responsible for the upkeep of many historic monuments.

Other remains found there were of people believed to have been killed in battle or killed elsewhere and buried at the site, Britain's greatest prehistoric monument.

The male skeleton dates anywhere from 100 B.C. to A.D. 1000. Nicks in the jaw and neck vertebrae indicate the man was decapitated from behind by a sharp sword, archaeologists said at a news conference.

When the remains were found in 1923, scientists assumed the man died of natural causes. It was only after they were located in May 1999 in storage at London's Natural History Museum that scientific opinion changed.

But while the manner of death is clear, the circumstances surrounding it remain a mystery, they said.